A day after the Chicago Sun-Times fired the entirety of its 28-person picture personnel, Chicago media critic Robert Feder (by means of Cult of Mac) is stating that the paper is training its reporters in iPhone photography to produce the photo material the paper requires.

Sun-Times reporters begin mandatory training today on ‘iPhone photography fundamentals’ following elimination of the paper’s entire photography personnel. ‘In the coming days and weeks, we will be working with all editorial staff members to train and equip you as much as possible to produce the content we need,’ managing editor Craig Newman informs staffers in a memo.

Chicago Tribune photojournalist Alex Garcia slammed the move, calling it ‘idiotic’ because press reporters aren’t prepared to produce both visual and written material. He also criticized utilizing iPhones for photojournalism because the smartphone doesn’t have options like different lenses and manual controls, which DSLR’s have.

An iPhone is simply an iPhone. It doesn’t have a telephoto to see method past police lines or throughout an industry, ballroom or four-lane motorway. It does not have a lot of manual controls to take care of the countless scenarios that automatic exposure will fail to capture. The number of scenarios are 18 % gray, anyhow?

Apple’s different iPhones have actually become some of the most popular cameras on Flickr, outranking more advanced DSLR cameras like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Apple has actually made efforts to significantly improve the iPhone’s camera over its past couple of iterations and in late April, the company even launched an ad concentrating on the popularity of the iPhone’s camera.